My guild finally killed Auriaya, again. Apparently she'd died weeks back and never again after that. I didn't see the kill, only that we were able to do Hodir. This was after weeks of missing 2-3 people in a raid, having undergeared people, and by my feeling, not much leadership going on. Finally there was a full raid, apparently properly geared, and they finally figured out the fight.

Notice I said 'they', not 'we'. I wasn't there. I died to her for weeks with no visible progress. It got to the point where I was seriously considering refusing to fight her or even leave the guild. This was no Razorscale or any other true guild-killer. No, this was a fairly annoying boss that we could not kill, until I'm not there.

To call it frustrating is an understatement. I'm furious. No, I'm not nerd-raging in gchat or anything like that, but I really feel like it. It feels like I worked hard towards something and it was taken away.

I missed the raid because of father's day. My mom decided to have a family gathering here. That meant a lot of my day spent around people too old to have much to talk about with. Nothing against them, they're all very nice, but I just don't have much interest in their careers, I hate talking about school or plans for the future, and I'm not sure they even have heard of WoW. What's left, politics? I'm pretty sure they're at the stage of being mostly out of things while I'm at the stage of having a head full of ideas that are driving me insane. I'd told one of the officers that I might not make it beforehand. I was able to get away a little early, but still I'd bet at least 10 minutes later than I needed. By then they just needed healers. I offered to respec, but I think they might have been full by then, just waiting to sort out which healers to take, and honestly, I'm very inexperienced and not quite up to the gear level. In other words it was a long shot that failed.

Earlier today when I'd told my friend (the officer) that I'd probably miss the raid he said they'd probably kill her, just so the game could spite me. He was right.

2
comments:

Anonymous
said...

I wouldn't get too worked up over it as that's the way raiding goes with that guild. I can guarantee it wasn't just because you weren't there. There's no rhyme or reason to why they can suddenly kill a boss on one night when they couldn't the night before with the same people.

It does sounds like you're in the same situation I was at when I ultimately decided to leave though. I was tired of wiping night after night on simple fights, like Auriaya, without any real sign of improvement or wiping repeatedly on bosses that had been killed previously. I too was at the point of just not logging on because it seemed pointless. Really, you need to ask yourself if it's worth it and if you enjoy it. I stuck around during TBC because the ratio between enjoyment and frustration was about even for me. There were some bad nights but there was an almost equal amount of good nights where decent progress was made. LK completely changed that though to the point were most nights were bad and the good nights were few and far between. I agree the "softness" of Naxx kind of set this all up - something you and I discussed before - but there's more to it I think and it's something I could never really put my finger on.

Bottom line though, is it worth it to you to keep slogging through the frustrating nights for the good nights when they do come?

I'm pretty sure I know who you are. It's a difficult thing to resolve. The guild I helped found was starting to suffer from low attendance due to holidays and people were leaving because of that, making it even worse. I don't intend to be one of those people. We have recruited a bunch of new people and most seem to be good, which probably was how cat lady finally died.

The thing you can't put your finger on is probably a population shift: accessible raiding brought in more people, which is good, but that inevitably increases the population of bad raiders. It might even be worse than just an expanded pool since as a general trend raiders would be the people willing to learn difficult fights and really self-evaluate while non-raiders are not. I'm not saying those are absolutes, but more of a "for a given population of X compared to Y you will find more Z" which doesn't make statements about any individuals.

Since we seem to be at a turning point, I'm willing to keep going, though I did tell myself that if Hodir takes too long I'm going to take a break for my own sanity.